The Struggle For Peace

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for the supervision and control of the whole of the organisa-
tion and activities of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
" On matters of Defence policy and strategy the Committee
is advised by the Chiefs of Staff, who are themselves advised
by a Joint Planning Committee. The Joint Planning Com-
mittee consists of the Directors of Plans in each of the three
Services, and that Committee, in turn, is assisted by three
further officers drawn from the Army, Navy and Air Force,
each of whom is a graduate of the Imperial Defence College.
As a result of this strengthening of the machinery of planning,
there has been an enormous speeding up of the process
of planning and of strategical appreciations, both those that
are designed to meet emergencies and those which take account
of long-range policy. In a word, I can say that never has
planning for strategical purposes been brought to so complete
a state as it is at present, and never has any Government been
so well served with co-ordinated advice and information on
strategy as is the case at present. But there is another phase
of the work to which I would like to refer in which an impor-
tant part has been played by my right hon. Friend. At this
time of the year, it is customary, and indeed necessary, to
make a review of the requirements of the Services before the
Estimates are prepared and laid before the House; but
recently a more intensive survey than usual has been carried
through by my right hon. Friend, in conjunction with the heads
of the several Services. This inquiry was originally initiated
last Summer by myself when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer,
in consultation with the Minister, and the purpose of it was
to establish the relations of our Defence programme with the
total resources available to us—resources of man power, of
productive capacity and of finance.
" All those three factors are closely connected with the
credit of the country and the general balance of trade. All of
them are important, but all of them are especially important
and need to be weighed with particular care in times of peace,
when we are trying to avoid any undue interference with
ordinary trade and commerce. I know that there are some who
have thought that perhaps it would be better that we should
devote the whole of our resources to the production of muni-
tidns. That is a course which any Government would